Читать книгу Hard, Soft and Wet - Melanie McGrath - Страница 36

More discoveries. A public key lets Macadamia send an encrypted message. What message, he won’t say. Some time after midnight he forwards software called Pretty Good Privacy, along with a list of instructions which will supposedly enable me to generate some secret codes called keys.

Note: Though we both live in London, we work on California time. Like I said, we’re sadsacks.

>The US government has classed pgp as munitions. Exporting it from the USA is illegal, like running guns writes Mac.

I can’t imagine what he has to tell me that’s so secret. That he’s a hitman perhaps? A secret agent? Herpes carrier? Cricket fan?

In order to send or receive a PGP-encrypted message, I have to command the software to generate two keys, a public one which I can give out to Mac and a private one, which I have to keep to myself. The public key can only encode. It can’t decode. So the principle is that I send Mac my public key, he encodes his message with it, sends it back to me, and I decrypt it using my private key. If he sends the message via an anonymous mailer, a computer which removes all reference to his name and e-mail address, it’s almost untraceable and almost completely secure.

Oh well, however shocking or terrible the message is, I don’t care. Mac makes me laugh and I like the way his mind works and we’re only friends in any case.

A long paragraph of capital letters and keyboard symbols appears on the screen some time after two. I instruct the programme to decrypt and stand back. The hard disk light topspins on-offs. Symbols flip as fast as numbers on the propaganda boards advertising the savings you make by switching telecom companies. In America. Eventually, four lines of message emerge from the chaos, like Poseidon coming up to quell the sea. Line one: Mac’s real-life name. Lines two to four: his address and phone number.

>Mac, your name and number are in the phone book. I just looked them up.

Phone numbers? This isn’t the point of virtual life at all. The point of virtual life is to remain apart, distinct, ethereal, untouched by the mess of reality. The point of it is its sheer mystery.

>I won’t phone you, Mac, and you won’t phone me.

Sometimes people have to be told things they ought to know already.